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The next version of the Lumina Desktop Environment has just been released!

This is mainly a bugfix release to correct an urgent issue with the system tray on FreeBSD 11, but there are a number of other slight improvements/updates included as well. The full list of changes is included at the bottom of this announcement, but the notable changes are as follows:

New Panel Plugin: “Application Launcher“

This allows the user to pin the shortcut for an application directly to a panel.

New Utility: “lumina-xconfig“

This utility allows the user to easily enable/disable additional monitors/screens within the desktop session.

Fix the issue with transparent system tray icons on FreeBSD 11

Add support for the XDG autostart specifications.

The FreeBSD port has already been updated and this version will be included in the next set of PC-BSD package updates (“Edge” packages being created now) as well as included in the next PC-BSD 11 image for April (coming soon).

Reminder: The Lumina desktop environment is still considered to be “beta-quality”, so if you find things that either don’t work or don’t work well, please report them on the PC-BSD bug tracker so that they can get fixed as soon as possible. Feel free to also post tickets for any feature requests or improvements that you think might be useful!

Changes Since 0.8.2

FreeDesktop Standards Compliance:

A number of bugs related to detecting/using XDG mimetypes were fixed.

Support for the XDG autostart specifications was added (usage only — more work is still necessary to convert the current Lumina autostart spec over)

Add some additional fallback routines to account for possible errors in *.desktop files.

New Utility: “lumina-xconfig”

This utility is a graphical front-end to xrandr, and allows the user to easily add/remove screens from the current X session.

Shortcuts to this utility are available in the user button plugin, and the settings menu plugin

Insight File Manager:

Add support for creating new (empty) files.

Add an option for enabling/disabling the use of image thumbnails (useful if you have massive directories of pictures — just be sure you disable thumbnails *before* loading the directory).

Add initial drag-and-drop support for moving files/dirs within a directory.

Load the specific icon for any application shortcuts.

Add the ability to view checksums of files.

Add some additional checks/excludes for copy/move operations in the background to prevent the user from performing illegal operations (such as moving a directory into itself).

Add support for listing statistics about the current directory on the window (number of files, total size of files, percent of the filesystem which is used).

Streamline the frequency of the background directory checker — now it runs much less often.

Desktop Changes:

Disable the shutdown/restart options on PC-BSD if the system is in the middle of performing updates. The system may still be shutdown/restart from within PCDM — this just adds an extra layer of safety for users.

Have the shutdown/restart options use the “-o” option on FreeBSD/PC-BSD so that the system performs the action much faster.

The next version of the Lumina desktop environment has just been released! Version 0.8.2 is mainly a “spit-and-polish” release: focusing on bugfixes, overall appearances, and interface layout/design. The FreeBSD port has already been updated to the new version, and the PC-BSD “Edge” repository will be making the new version available within the next day or two (packages building now). If you are creating/distributing your own packages, you can find the source code for this release in the “qt5/0.8.2″ branch in the Lumina repository on GitHub.

The major difference that people will notice is that the themes/colors distributed with the desktop have been greatly improved, and I have included a few examples below. The full details about the changes in this release are listed at the bottom of the announcement.

Reminder: The Lumina desktop environment is still considered to be “beta-quality”, so if you find things that either don’t work or don’t work well, please report them on the PC-BSD bug tracker so that they can get fixed as soon as possible.

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Changes from 0.8.1 -> 0.8.2:

New Utility: “lumina-info”

This utility provides basic information about the current version of the Lumina desktop as well as link to various information online (source repository, list of contributors, bug tracker, etc…).

Theming:

New Color Scheme: PCBSD10-Default (the default for new PC-BSD users)

Lumina-[Red/Green/Gold/Purple] color schemes updated.

“Lumina-Default” and “None” theme templates updated significantly.

Make it easier for a distributor to set a default theme/color by just supplying the name instead of the full path (since paths can be different on different OS’s)

Fix issue with some fonts not loading properly.

Distinguish between “Save” and “Apply” in the theme template editor (“Save” to update the file but keep the editor open, “Apply” to update the file and close the editor). This makes it much easier to test changes to the current theme template as you don’t need to close/re-open the editor to try it out.

Add the ability to distinguish between transparent/opaque desktop plugins in the theme template.

Configuration Utility Changes:

Add a new dialog for selecting plugins of all kinds. This makes it easier to browse through and read the descriptions of the plugins before actually selecting one.

The next version of the Lumina desktop environment (0.8.1) has just been tagged in the source tree, the FreeBSD port has been updated, and pre-built packages will be available in the upcoming PC-BSD 10.1.1 release (or earlier if you are using the “Edge” package repository).

This version includes quite a number of quality-of-life improvements, new plugins, and the usual assortment of bugfixes. There is a full breakdown of the changes below, but for most of you a screenshot (or two) is worth a thousand words.

Enjoy!

New Features:

1) New Desktop Plugin: “Audio Player”

This plugin allows the user to play audio files directly from the desktop (with playlist randomization if desired).

2) New Panel Plugin: “Home Button”

This plugin will minimize all open windows so the desktop will be completely visible.

3) New Panel Plugin: “Start Menu”

This plugin is the classical alternative to the “User Button”, and provides a simple menu for quickly launching applications.

4) New Slideshow file interactions in the Insight File Manager

When viewing an image slideshow, the user now has the options to delete the current image file, or rotate that image file clockwise or counter-clockwise (automatically updating the image file as necessary).

5) New Backend distribution customization framework.

There is a new system file (<PREFIX>/etc/luminaDesktop.conf), that can be set by the distributor of the Lumina desktop or a system administrator to provide system-wide defaults. This allows full customization of the initial desktop experience for a new user (will not change existing settings), allowing the distributor of the desktop to easily create a customized experience for their users. Along with this comes the ability for a user to reset their desktop settings back to defaults should the need arise (either system defaults or the defaults set by the Lumina project itself). This can be performed through the desktop configuration utility (in the session settings).

Updated Features:

1) Allow a customized user icon for the user button (this same icon will also be utilized for the user in PCDM). This option is available through the desktop configuration utility (in the session settings).

2) Have panels follow the current desktop theme by default. A customized color may still be specified through through the desktop configuration utility (in the panel settings), and any previous color setting for the panel is still saved as the customized color for that panel.

3) Have desktop plugins now follow the current theme. This allows for a much more unified look and feel, with simple user modification through locally saved modifications to any theme templates.

4) Convert the “Note Pad” desktop plugin to a file-based utility. Now all notes are automatically created in the ~/Notes directory (with the .note extension), and a generic non-note text file may also be loaded into the plugin for editing/watching. All notes in the previous format will be auto-converted to the new format the first time the new version is used. Warning: if you currently have multiple notepad plugins on your desktop, only one of them will have all the notes successfully converted to the new format. Before updating to the new version, it is a good idea to move all your notes into a single plugin instance (and remove the others) to ensure a proper conversion to the new format.

Bug Fixes:

- Fix when auto-hidden panels are re-hidden. This fixes a Qt5 bug where moving the mouse over the system tray was re-hiding the panel, preventing access to the system tray applications.

- Make the userbutton open even faster than before (auto-updates the menu in the background if applications are added/removed from the system).

- Various stability fixes involving the removal of desktop plugins.

- Filenames with multiple “.“s in them will now be properly handled through lumina-open.

- Have the log-out window appear on the current screen (instead of always the left-most screen).

- Make sure the log-out window is closed at the start of the log out procedure.

The first Qt5-based version of the Lumina desktop environment has just been released!

The source code for this release is available in the Lumina repository on GitHub, the FreeBSD port has been updated, and the new package is getting pushed out to the PC-BSD “Edge” repository here in the next couple days. Version 0.8.0 is mainly just an update to all the backend systems, but there are a few notable changes:

Updates for version 0.8.0:

- Uses Qt5 (tested with 5.2) instead of Qt4. This also brings in a new dependency on the XCB libraries.

- Uses the new QMultimedia framework instead of Phonon for playing multimedia files. This has much better results when playing audio/video files through the Insight file manager.

- New built-in single application framework for the Lumina project (no more external dependency for this, and it works on all OS’s).

- New task manager mode (no groups). This reproduces the traditional task manager functionality of one button per window, and it lists the window title for each button. For ease-of-use, this mode is treated as a distinct/new panel plugin through the Lumina configuration utility.

- The task manager “action” menu (right-click) now has many more options that are auto-generated based on the current window state.

- The lumina-open crash reporter for applications now provides details about the crash from the application (if any are available).

Bugs Fixed:

- New windows will no longer appear with the titlebar underneath a Lumina panel.

- Command-line inputs with special localized characters are now properly used.

- Large clean-up of recursive file operations in the file manager. (Better reporting and error detection, add ability to copy a directory into itself, make sure no files are missed during recursive operations).

- Detect when running in a VirtualBox VM (if OS is FreeBSD) and hide the screen brightness controls since these do not work in a VM.

- Clean up how the special “Exec=” field codes are handled for XDG desktop shortcuts (fixes the issues with starting various KDE applications like Okular).

- Various other small bugs fixed.

As always, please test it out and submit any bugs or feature requests through the PC-BSD bug tracker.

The next version of the Lumina desktop environment has just been tagged in source! PC-BSD users on the “Edge” package repository should expect to see an updated package available in the next couple days. Please test it out and file bug reports or feature requests as necessary on the PC-BSD bug tracker.

What has changed in this version:

Streamline the startup process and Lumina utilities, with many of the utilities now being multi-threaded.

Desktop View: Auto-generate icons for everything in the ~/Desktop folder

New Utility: “lumina-search“

Quickly search for and run applications/files/directories

Registered on the system applications menu under “Utilities -> Lumina Search”

For new Lumina users, this utility is set to automatically run with the “Alt-F2” keyboard shortcut

New Color Schemes:

Lumina-[Green, Gold, Purple, Red, Glass] now available out of box (default: Glass)

New backend system for registering default applications:

Uses mime-types instead of extensions now

All lumina utilities have been updated to work with the new system

WARNING: Previously registered defaults might not be transferred to the new system, so you may need to re-set your default web browser/email client through lumina-config after updating to the new version.